#LetTeachersTeach

My parents are retired teachers—public and parochial schools respectively. My cousin teaches in one of the most challenged districts in our nation. My daughter and her partner are in their third years with City Year and Teach for America. I’ve taught/teach at a secondary school in Rome, two denominational seminaries, and at one of the best (the best IMO!) universities in the world.

So why does that matter? Because in no case did I feel I should be packing a gun to “protect” my students. That’s what my friends in law enforcement and the military are for! I can shoot. I grew up around guns and hunters. I live in a state where deer and moose season is an annual festival. We can protect a right to bear arms while ensuring our basic human right to life.

But kids shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns to school. Those with mental illness and histories of domestic violence shouldn’t be allowed to have guns at all. And most of all, it ought to be a lot harder to buy a gun than it is to vote, drink a beer, and drive a car.

#GunsInTheWrongHandsKillPeople just as people do. But I’ll take my chances with a knife any time.

So politicians, stop prostituing yourselves to the NRA. Preachers, stop making excuses for incredibly bad behavior. Principals resist any decision to arm your teachers. Police do your job and keep guns out of the hands of those who have no reasonable right to have one. And all of us—parents, friends, people of faith—let’s be honest about what the 2nd Ammendmanet was really meant for and come together around sensible gun legislation to keep us all safe.

We owe it to the kids killed in Parkland, those massacres from a Church in Charleston to a concert in Cegas, and to all those whose whose lives have been taken by guns in the wrong hands.